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Microsoft wants virus-infected PCs quarantined

Scott Charney, Corporate Vice President, Trustworthy Computing at Microsoft, has shared his thoughts on the future of PC safety at the International Security Solutions Europe conference in Germany recently.

He proposed one possible approach to addressing botnets and other malware would be to implement a global collective defence of internet health, similar to what we see in the world of public health.

“Just as when an individual who is not vaccinated puts others’ health at risk, computers that are not protected or have been compromised with a bot put others at risk and pose a greater threat to society,” he said.

Charney argues that in the physical world, international, national, and local health organisations identify, track and control the spread of disease which can include quarantining people to avoid the infection of others.

So why not do the same with infected PCs and take them offline?

“Simply put, we need to improve and maintain the health of consumer devices connected to the internet in order to avoid greater societal risk,” he continued. “To realise this vision, there are steps that can be taken by governments, the IT industry, Internet access providers, users and others to evaluate the health of consumer devices before granting them unfettered access to the Internet or other critical resources.”